History of British Football MagazinesThe first black and white printed football specific newspaper was " The Goal: The Chronicle of Football" printed in London from 22 November 1873 till 25 April 1874 the second was "Football" which ran from 4 October 1882 till 11 April 1883, ultimately incorporating with "Pastime".
From the late 1890s football clubs started producing their own programmes and newspapers started to produce football based editions.
Early Club specific publications included:
"The Football Programme and Weekly Calendar, Manchester", 11 October 1890 till 28 February 1891
"The Official Programme: The Official Organ of Manchester City, Newton Heath, Broughton Rangers & Salford Clubs", 3 September 1898 till 28 April 1900
"The Official Programme: The Only Official Organ of the Everton, L'pool, New B'ton, R'k Ferry & Tranmere Clubs", 1 September 1898 till 29 April 1899
Into the twentieth Century we see the arrival of the "Football Chronicle", which ran from 16 September 1911 till 25 April 1914 and continued after the war from 30 August 1919 till 19 December 1936.The Football Favourite ran from 4 September 1920 till 30 April 1921, continued as The Football and Sports Favourite 7 May 1921 - 30 March 1929, then Boys' Football Favourite, ultimately becoming Boys' Favourite.
In the 1930's the "Football Weekly" Marketed as "the great paper for the great game -every Wednesday 2d" was probably the best seller.
Topical Times ran from 1919 to 1940 producing over a 1,000 weekly issues in a newspaper format.It was published by DC Thomson who went onto greater things with the Dandy and Beano.
All these periodicals still were missing the crucial element of colour photography; in 1931 the first colour photo was printed in a British newspaper. (The Times).
In 1937 magazine publishers started printing in colour. Odhams launched Woman with high-quality gravure printing, which was Britain's first full-colour magazine.
In Charles Buchan's autobiography, which he worked on in the late 1940's, he commented that there was still no "weekly bible of the game". Other sports related colour magazines were around such as Sporting World and World Sports but they were not 100% football specific and the ones that were did not have the colour that the mass selling women's magazines featured.
Charles Buchan's launched Football Monthly in September 1951 and the world had its first modern style football magazine. Amazingly with so many major publishing houses around he launched independently as Charles Buchan's Publications Ltd based at 408 The Strand, London WC2.
"Raich Carter's Soccer Star" started a year later on the 20th September 1952. Raich Carter was adamant that his publication was a magazine not a newspaper, whereas we would say nowadays that they were single spot colour on newsprint. In the June 5th issue 1954 his editorial was why his magazine didn't carry up to date news.
"Soccer Star is printed by letterpress flat bed machines. Two sections of the magazine are machined separately; the red that appears on the front cover makes a third machine run and then copies are folded, stitched and trimmed - all by separate operation. Adhering to schedules laid down by our printers we go to press with the first of our eight page sections actually 9 days before the date of the issue. So it is impossible for us to be a news magazine."
In the summer of 1955 the Raich Carter logo was dropped and it ran as Soccer Star until 19th June 1970 when it merged into "World Soccer"".
"World Soccer" was the world's second oldest monthly football magazine when it started in October 1960 and is today the worlds longest running football magazine as it is still being published by IPC, with a monthly circulation today of around 52,000.
" Jimmy Hill's Football Weekly " launched in 1967 followed by "Goal" magazine edited by Alan Hughes on the 16th August 1968 and published by IPC.
In late 1968 the "International Football Illustrated" launched which just printed full page player pictures and biographies and didn't try to be newsworthy.
IPC had also launched Shoot magazine, a football comic in August 1969 and by 1971 both Shoot and Goal were the market leaders with 220,000 weekly sales each.
September 1969 saw the launch of "Monthly Soccer" that covered the non-league and amateur game.
On the 10th of January 1970 “Striker” was launched which ran for 113 issues from 10/1/70 to 4/3/72 inclusive.Also in 1970 Marshall and Cavendish came on the scene with the "Book of Football" magazine at the same time as "Inside Football" which ran from October 1970 until the 26th February 1972 .It joined forces with “Striker” to become the short lived “Inside Football and Striker”.
In 1974 Charles Buchan's Football Monthly Digest closed and became " Football " and was maintained by IPC until 1995 when it was sold to Ken Bates at Chelsea. Goal failed at the same time and was officially incorporated into Shoot on June 15th 1974.
In 1979 "Match" was launched (now owned by Emap) as competition to Shoot which also continues to this date but is more a comic than a magazine for grown ups.
On the 22nd August 1979 the "Football Weekly News" started and stopped again quite quickly in June 1981.
No one really provided "World Soccer" with any monthly competition from 1974 until the "When Saturday Comes" launch in 1986. It first started life as a fans "zine" that evolved into Britain's only current independent football magazine with a monthly circulation nowadays of around 21,000.
"The Footballer" started in July 1989 and was sub titled the "Journal of Soccer History and Statistics" and ran until May/June 1996. It was published by the book company Sports Promotion International.
"90 minutes" arrived in October 1990 and stopped again on the 17th of May 1997.It was started by Crystal Palace fan Dan Goldstein and remained independent until IPC took it over.
"Goalmouth"-the monthly national football magazine launched in May 1992 and lasted one season.It was published by EPG Publishing and was edited by John Jackson.
"Goal Monthly" was a relaunch of the Goal brand in October 1995 but now in monthly format instead of weekly. The first issue states that it comes from "The makers of 90 minutes" which as of the mid nineties was IPC again.
"Four Four Two" launched in September 1994 - not owned by IPC but by Haymarket Publishing and still going strong today with the biggest circulation of the big 3 of around 112,000 every month.
"Total Football" tried to take on "WSC", World Soccer and "442" from August 1995 and also failed.
It has been quiet on the British Football magazine front since the mid 1990's, a monthly magazine called "Eleven" launched in September 2002 and was no more by July 2003.
In June 2008 Shoot magazine closed a year short of it's 40th birthday leaving " Match" (130,000 copies) on it's own in the football comic market.
For the grown up magazine readers we have still the big 3 of "World Soccer", "WSC" and "442" still slogging it out for world domination!
Its amazing to look back now on the circulation figures of 250,000 a month back in the early 1960's achieved by Charles Buchan's Football Monthly, still more than the current big 3 can muster in total.
|
